Latin America-Caribbean Solidarity Committee

After re-establishing diplomatic relations with the United States, the lifting of the blockade, among other aspects, will be indispensable for the normalization of relations. On July 1st, 2015, the President of the Councils of State and of Ministers of the Republic of Cuba, Army General Raúl Castro Ruz, and the President of the United States of America, Barack Obama, exchanged letters through which they confirmed their decision to reestablish diplomatic relations between the two countries and open permanent diplomatic missions in the respective capitals as from July 20, 2015....

Ads and articles promoting travel to Cuba seem to be everywhere.
Didn’t President Barack Obama announce a new relationship with Cuba on
Dec. 17? Didn’t that mean the U.S. blockade of Cuba, a relic of the Cold
War, was over?...

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has called on supporters to join a campaign rejecting a smear campaign against the Bolivarian Revolution. Maduro was responding to a lengthy May 18 Wall Street Journal article that falsely accuses National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello of drug trafficking and money laundering and that slanders Bolivarian Venezuela as a “global cocaine hub.”...

The third round of talks between Cuba and the U.S. to normalize diplomatic relations took place at the U.S. State Department on May 21 and 22. In press conferences at the close of the meetings, the chief negotiators of both delegations characterized the meetings as professional, respectful and productive....

The “VII Summit of the Americas,” to be held April 10-11 in Panama City, Panama, is of particular interest since Latin American and Caribbean states firmly told the Organization of American States there would be no further summits where Cuba was excluded, forcing the U.S. to agree....

Ever since Comandante Hugo Chavez became president of Venezuela in 1998 and the Bolivarian Revolution began, there has been no time that the opposition — supported and, to a large extent, led by the United States — has stopped trying to overturn the revolutionary process. It is a story repeated many times in Latin America — so much so that there’s a joke that “the U.S. is the only country where there are no coups because there is no Yankee embassy there.”

Over 100 students and supporters gathered at Sproul Hall at the University of California here on Dec. 3 to call attention to the role of the U.S. government in the disappearance of 43 students from a teachers’ college in Ayotzinapa, Mexico. The Mexican government has admitted that the police in Iguala, the town where the students disappeared, had turned them over to local druglords on orders of the mayor....

The disappearance and presumed murder of the 43 Mexican students of
Ayotzinapa exposed to the world the relation between drug cartels and the
violence of the state apparatus in capitalist Mexico. What is not publicized in
the corporate media is the U.S. role in corrupting and impoverishing Mexico
— and in causing the drug war that has taken 100,000 lives. Today, the
masses there are rising up in protest....

President Barack Obama issued a long-awaited Executive Order on immigration policy on Nov. 20. That same day hundreds of thousands of people in Mexico took part in mass marches in solidarity with the 43 missing students from Ayotzinapa in the state of Guerrero....

A global day of protest on Oct. 23 demanded the return — alive — of 43 Mexican student activists missing since Sept. 26. While many large demonstrations occurred in cities around the world, the biggest was in the Zócalo central plaza of Mexico City, where estimates of the crowd ran as high as half a million....

At the initiative of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, on Oct. 20
heads of state from the Bolivarian Alliance for the People of Our
Americas—Peoples’ Trade Agreement (ALBA-TCP), along with health
agencies and professionals, representatives of the United Nations, the
Pan-American Health Organization and the Organization of East Caribbean States,
met in Havana to chart an action plan to help confront the Ebola epidemic in
Africa and prevent its expansion to other regions....

Venezuela is in the midst of the difficult task of constructing the path to
socialism. Like any living process, it does not go forward in a straight line.
It instead has advances and setbacks, mistakes and corrections. The important
thing is the continuous effort of the people in propelling the construction of
a fair system to once and for all supplant the violent capitalism still
prevalent in Venezuela....

Human rights activists marched from the New York Times offices to the Empire State Building — which houses Human Rights Watch — to protest both institutions as tools of the CIA, specifically in their role attacking the Bolivarian government of Venezuela....

In yet another sign of the revolutionary momentum sweeping the Americas, Salvador Sánchez Cerén was inaugurated president of El Salvador on June 1 amidst an emotional and victorious air of celebration here in the capital....

While the eyes of the world focus on the events in Ukraine, the U.S. empire is using this opportunity to intensify its plan to overthrow governments in the Latin American and Caribbean region that are leading the process for change there — Cuba and Venezuela....

What historical significance does May have for the people of Honduras? Is it
transcendent just because of the festivities on International Workers’
Day, during which workers around the world lift their collective fists to greet
their class brothers and sisters with the voices of proletarian
internationalism?...

Progressives in Latin America and the
Caribbean have put defense of the Venezuelan government and people at the top
of their priorities. They showed this today when a seminar that had begun as a
standard exchange of information among workers and progressive organizations
from the continent and worldwide turned into a demonstration of solidarity with
Bolivarian Venezuela....

Last month, a delegation from the International Action Center traveled to Honduras to assist with monitoring the presidential election there. Widespread fraud was expected and did indeed happen. The IAC delegation is unanimous in declaring the election as fraudulent. While in Honduras, the delegation also had the opportunity to meet with many Hondurans who have suffered under the brutal U.S. government-supported Honduran regime. One such meeting was in Comayagua, Honduras’ original capital, with the families of men murdered in a horrific prison fire. ...

Fascist elements from the Svoboda organizations have been playing an
increasingly active role in a protest movement in Kiev of the country’s
wealthiest sectors, who are demanding that Ukraine orient its politics and
economy toward the imperialist European Union. The following was posted online Dec. 10 at kpu.ua by the press service of the Central Committee of the Lenin Komsomol of Ukraine (Young Communists)....

The Honduran people remain in a state of organized “tense calm” a day after the country’s Supreme Electoral Council (TSE) declared ruling National Party leader Juan Orlando Hernández the winner in the polls, supposedly defeating Libertad y Refundación (Libre) party candidate Xiomara Castro de Zelaya. Hondurans had turned out in record numbers to vote for Castro de Zelaya, and Libre has denounced the TSE for committing fraud in the elections, and is organizing its base, made up of all sectors of Honduran working-class society....

This week a delegation will travel to Honduras to show our solidarity with
the resistance there during the country’s national elections. This will
be the third time the International Action Center has sent a delegation to
Honduras. The first was in October 2009, when democratically elected President
Mel Zelaya was overthrown in a U.S.-supported coup. We were able to witness
with our own eyes a burgeoning and exciting resistance movement incorporating
all sectors of Honduras’s working class....

A presidential election is taking place in Honduras today
that polls indicate will reverse the 2009 coup. Progressive and human rights
organizations have reported on the military’s last-minute attempts to
intimidate international observers who have come to ensure a fair and free
election process....

On Nov. 6, the Colombian Government and the FARC-EP insurgency published a joint statement regarding the agreement reached on the second item on the agenda of the peace negotiations that have been underway in Havana, Cuba. The point in question is “political participation.”...

A U.S.-sponsored military coup in Honduras on June 29, 2009, ousted elected
President Manuel “Mel” Zelaya. Since that time, his spouse, Xiomara Castro de Zelaya, has become a leading figure in the movement to restore his presidency as well as a leader in the burgeoning resistance movement for the rights of all throughout the country...

Historical events were plentiful in Colombia this past year: agricultural
strikes, peace negotiations, people’s assemblies, large student
demonstrations — in short, dynamism in social movements. Although the
upsurge has not been massive enough to change the balance of power, it has been
enough to give everyone a glimpse of the path toward hope for this
country’s people, for whom hope up to now has been denied....

The movement in Colombia has issued a worldwide call to progressives, unionists and justice loving people everywhere to support the peace process in Colombia. The International Day of Solidarity is a Call to Action issued by Colombian organizations, FENSUAGRO and Lazos de Dignidad. FENSUAGRO is Colombia's largest agricultural workers union. Its Vice President, Huber Ballesteros was arrested and charged with 'aggravated rebellion', and is symbolic of the ominous repression against Colombia's union and progressive movement. Colombia has endured a social, political and armed conflict for more than 50 years. Almost 220,000 people - almost all civilians - have died in the violence. Millions have been displaced from their homes....

The movement in Colombia has issued a worldwide call to progressives, unionists and justice loving people everywhere to support the peace process in Colombia.
The International Day of Solidarity is a Call to Action issued by Colombian organizations, FENSUAGRO and Lazos de Dignidad. FENSUAGRO is Colombia's largest agricultural workers union. Its Vice President, Huber Ballesteros was
arrested and charged with 'aggravated rebellion', and is symbolic of the ominous repression against Colombia's union and progressive movement.
Colombia has endured a social, political and armed conflict for more than 50 years. Almost 220,000 people - almost all civilians - have died in the violence. Millions have been displaced from their homes....

In 1973, fascist terror orchestrated by the U.S. government in Chile led to the crushing of a genuine revolutionary people’s struggle that was sweeping the country. A progressive, popular and beloved leader, Salvador Allende, had been elected President.
...

The IAC along with HondurasUSAResistencia and other national solidarity
organizations, including the Honduras Solidarity Network are organizing a
delegation to Honduras in solidarity with the resistance movement. We will be
eye-witnesses for the historic presidential election that is scheduled to take
place on Sunday, Nov. 24, 2013. The Presidential candidate is Xiomara Castro
Zelaya, a leader of the resistance, and a union and also a resistance leader
for Vice President, Juan Barahona.
...

The International Action Center along with Honduras USA Resistencia and other national solidarity organizations, including the Honduras Solidarity Network, are organizing a delegation to Honduras in solidarity with the resistance movement. The delegation will be eyewitnesses for the historic presidential election that is scheduled to take place on Nov. 24. The presidential candidate is Xiomara Castro Zelaya, a leader of the resistance, and the vice-presidential candidate is Juan Barahona, a union and also a resistance leader....

When the Free Fare Movement (MPL) in Sao Paolo, Brazil,
initiated a call on social media for a demonstration on June 6 to protest an
increase of public transport fares in the city, no one imagined the enormous
response it would elicit and its political repercussions....

On May 22, with cries of “That, that, that’s the way to
govern” and “They shall not return” (referring to the
right-wing oligarchy’s lust for power), the first graduating class of the
Jesus Rivero Bolivarian Workers University heard Venezuelan President
Nicolás Maduro’s proposal to create a Workers’ Militia in
workplaces around the country....

Just ten days before, Ríos Montt had been found guilty for acts of
genocide and crimes against humanity in Guatemala that amounted to some of the
worst atrocities ever in Latin American history. His conviction had been the
very first time that a head of state had been held accountable for atrocities
in a national tribunal. His conviction included his being sentenced to 80 years
in prison....

Honduras USA Resistencia and the Honduras Solidarity Network have issued a
call for Nationally Coordinated Days of Actions for Honduras on June 28. These
actions will commemorate the 2009 coup in that country and express solidarity
with the resistance movement in Honduras. The International Action Center and
other organizations have endorsed....

One million Colombians marched in the capital city of Bogotá as well as
other cities and towns on April 9 to show their support of peace negotiations
between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-Peoples
Army (FARC-EP). Talks which began in Oslo, Norway, in 2012 are now continuing
in Havana, Cuba....

As many as 250,000 students took to the streets in Santiago and other
Chilean cities on April 11, renewing their demands for education reform.

After two years of student marches that have paralyzed Chile’s major
cities and generated expectations of change to a troubled system, the crisis
over education reform remains a key electoral issue ahead of November’s
presidential election....

Fascist-like elements backed by U.S. imperialism are
attempting a coup against constitutional rule in Venezuela. The Venezuelan
masses, other Latin Americans and progressives worldwide are standing up and
saying “no” to this coup, which follows the rightist defeat in that
country’s free and fair election April 14....

Right-wing elements backed by U.S. imperialism are attempting a coup against constitutional rule in Venezuela. Seven people in Venezuela have already been killed. There is a witch hunt against Cuban doctors who have made great sacrifice to provide health care there. The Venezuelan masses, other Latin Americans and progressives worldwide have stood up and said “no” to this coup, which follows the rightist defeat in that country’s free and fair election April 15....

The July 26th Coalition, a solidarity group that supports the Cuban revolution, hosted a March 13 evening of information and open dialogue with two representatives of the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) in New York City. The women were here participating in events held at the United Nations and hosted by the Commission on the Status of Women during International Working Women’s Month....

Pepe
is traveling throughout the US as part of a national tour organized by the
Honduras Solidarity Network. Please come to learn about the brutal repression
being carried out against the LGBT community in Honduras. But also learn about
the heroic resistance of the Honduran people who are organizing against the
illegal coup of 2009 and for a new society. Since 2009, over 80 mainly
transgender women and gay men have been killed in
Honduras....

Now that President Obama has come out
in support of marriage equality, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has
dedicated a small budget to defend LGBT rights internationally, it’s the
perfect time to remind them that the abuse and killings of gay and transgender
people keep piling up in Honduras—even as Washington heralds the
country’s return to “democracy.”...

On the morning of Sept. 12, 1973, Victor Jara, the internationally acclaimed
folk singer/writer, theater director, activist and musician, was taken along
with thousands of prisoners to the Chile Stadium in Santiago, Chile, where he
was repeatedly beaten and tortured. The bones in his hands were broken, as were
his ribs....

Since Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez announced the recurrence of
the cancer that he has been battling since 2011 and the need for additional
surgery, he has been the object of world solidarity. He told the Venezuelan
people on Dec. 8 that his last medical examination showed that malignant cells
recurred at the site in his abdomen where he had been treated earlier. As a
result, he needed a fourth operation....

The eyes of the world were glued to their TV screens. TeleSUR and the BBC in Spanish transmitted live the almost three-hour-long press conference of the representatives of FARC-EP and the Colombian government on Oct. 18, at the end of the establishment of the Peace Negotiation table in Oslo, Norway....

With Hugo Chavez’s historic win this October, the Venezuelan people
have committed to carry forward the Bolivarian Revolution, with its advances in
social equality, human rights, community power, and more. Join us this January
to witness the presidential inauguration on January 10th, followed by visits to
different parts of the country. One of the focuses of this trip will be food
sovereignty, or how both the government and the people are taking back control
of the country’s agricultural and food systems. We will also explore
other areas of social transformation, including education, healthcare, and
direct citizen participation in the political process. There will also be trips
to beaches, parks, and other sites of interest....

With Hugo Chavez’s historic win this October, the Venezuelan people have committed to carry forward the Bolivarian Revolution, with its advances in social equality, human rights, community power, and more. Join us this January to witness the presidential inauguration on January 10th, followed by visits to different parts of the country. One of the focuses of this trip will be food sovereignty, or how both the government and the people are taking back control of the country’s agricultural and food systems. We will also explore other areas of social transformation, including education, healthcare, and direct citizen participation in the political process. There will also be trips to beaches, parks, and other sites of interest....

Chavela Vargas, born Isabel Vargas Lizano in the town of San Joaquín de Flores, Costa Rica, died at the age of 93 in Cuernavaca, México, on Aug. 5. A singer as well as a sex and gender rebel, Vargas emigrated to Mexico at the age of 14 and lived most of her life there as a naturalized Mexican citizen....

The Summer Olympics, since 1960, has provided a global forum for a whole host of important social issues and struggles. The great Muhammad Ali, at the age of 18, threw his boxing gold medal into a river near his home of Louisville, Ky., to protest U.S. racism in the aftermath of the 1960 Rome Olympics.

Only 10 days before the 1968 Olympics opened in Mexico City, a student-led protest against government repression at the city’s Plaza de las Tres Culturas was attacked by government forces, resulting in the Tlatelolco Massacre, during which hundreds of unarmed civilians were killed....

A New York City march on June 28 to celebrate the third year of resistance to the U.S.-sponsored coup in Honduras turned into a protest of the recent parliamentary coup in Paraguay as well. The International Action Center’s Committee in Solidarity with the Caribbean and Latin America, joined by activists from Honduras, Puerto Rico, Argentina and Ecuador, rallied near Times Square and then marched to the United Nations, stopping and chanting at the Honduran and Paraguayan consulates on the way....

Another right-wing coup d’état has toppled a democratically elected president in Latin America. Three years after the coup in Honduras that deposed President Manuel Zelaya in June 2009, the same forces have overthrown President Fernando Lugo in Paraguay....

Without getting publicity in the United States, a struggle opposing U.S. corporate interests is brewing in Central America. An Indigenous woman, Cacica [Chief] Silvia Carrera is leading this struggle. ...

When the New York Times publishes an op-ed piece stating that Honduras is
“descending deeper into a human rights and security abyss” and adds
that this is “in good part the State Department’s making,”
something is changing. (Jan. 26)...

“A social movement strong enough to force change.” That
statement could describe the Occupy Wall Street movement, but it refers to the
struggle of Mexican electrical workers and Mexican miners in Cananea, Sonora.
Leaders from these struggles will open the 8th U.S./Cuba/Mexico/Latin America
Labor Conference on Dec. 2 in Tijuana, Mexico....

This Dec. 2, 3 and 4 workers from the U.S., Cuba, Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela,
Argentina and other Latin American countries will analyze the global capitalist
crisis, its effects on workers throughout the hemisphere and with real examples
showing how to combat it. Three days of intensive classes and discussion --
Nov. 29, 30 and Dec. 1 , with teachers from Cuba's Lazaro Pena workers'
school -- will precede the conference....

Alfonso Cano, leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia-People’s Army (FARC-EP) was killed in combat on Nov. 4 by the
Colombian Army in that country’s southwest region of Cauca. For several
hours that day, dozens of helicopters and planes surrounded this rural area,
the home of peasant families, and then they started bombing, hitting the place
where the FARC leader was....

From capitalist media pundits to the Occupy Wall Street encampments
struggling to hold public space in countless cities and towns across the U.S.,
this question is bubbling underneath the daily actions and police
repression....

The U.S. government’s façade that it is a champion of democracy
and respectful of other countries’ sovereignty has once again been torn
away by Washington’s recent treatment of two distinct governments in two
Latin American countries: Colombia and Ecuador....

The Latin America-Caribbean Solidarity Committee of the
International Action Center & HondurasUSAResistencia urges everyone to read
the following statement in solidarity with the people of Honduras. A wave of
repression is sweeping the country and the movement in the US must say no. We
urge everyone to organize an contingent in solidarity with Latin America &
the Caribbean and the historic April 9 anti-war actions in NYC and San
Francisco. Si se puede!...

After receiving massive support in Cuba, a delegation of Iranian activists has visited Venezuela in the second stop of its tour of Latin American countries, an effort designed to promote international solidarity with Iran....

Hundreds of thousands of Haitians still live under tarps and tents because
their houses were destroyed in the Jan. 12 earthquake. Hundreds are dying every
week from an epidemic of cholera caused by lack of access to clean water. Haiti
is still occupied by Minustah, the U.N.’s armed force for the
“stabilization” of this impoverished country....

For the seventh consecutive year, union leaders, social movement activists
and socialists from many countries in the Western Hemisphere came together in
this dynamic border city on the first weekend in December for intense
discussions. They focused on the global crisis of the imperialist system, its
increasing belligerence and its devastating attacks on the living conditions of
the international working class....

Latin American solidarity and anti-imperialist activists around the world, as well as the people of Latin America did not need WikiLeaks’ “leaked” documents to tell them what they already knew: the U.S. government was well aware that the June 28, 2009 ouster of democratically and legitimately elected President Jose Manuel Zelaya of Honduras was illegal and unconstitutional....

From Dec. 3 to 5 in Tijuana, Mexico — just minutes from the San Diego,
Calif., airport — a cross-section of workers from Latin America who are
confronting the global crisis will meet with U.S. workers grappling with
devastating challenges. Building on six previous conferences, the
meeting’s aim is to grow the unity of the working class in the Americas
and increase its influence — from the tip of Chile to Alaska — by
sharing problems but also examining strategies to fight and win....

Nectalí Rodezno, Attorney and Coordinator
of the National Lawyers Front
Against the Military Coup in Honduras, Is leading an extensive tour in the United States during the
month November,exposing the truth of what really happened in Honduras, during
the military coup in June 28th, 2009....

Cuban leaders of the Confederation of Cuban Worker s (CTC) will visit Tijuana,
Mexico, a border city 15 minutes south of downtown San Diego and the
San Diego Airport - U.S./Mexico border. This conference will give people
from North America (the United States, Canada and Mexico) the opportunity to
hear first hand from the Latinoamerican and Caribbean workers. Also, you will
hear from Union leaders of Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Haiti,
Colombia, Honduras, Mexico, Brazil, El Salvador, Puerto Rico and the
U.S. discussing the social and labor movements in the Americas.

and coordinators of Encuentro Sindical Nuestra America have also been
invited. ESNA is a new development that involves the largest and most militant
labor federations throughout Latin America....

n October 6, 1976 a civilian Cuban airliner took off from the coast of Barbados towards Cuba. Among the 73 passengers on board was the Cuban Junior Fencing team who were proudly returning to their island with gold medals. Along with them were 11 humble students from Guyana who were to begin studying in Cuba, five passengers of the Democratic Republic of Korea, among them a young girl. There were 57 Cuban passengers and flight crew on that plane. But flight 455 never made it to its destination. Its 73 passengers died a horrible death when a bomb, ordered to be placed in the plane by the international terrorists Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, blew up in mid air....

The Ecuadorean people came into the streets by the thousands to confront the
national police and prevent a coup and possible assassination of President
Rafael Correa on Sept. 30. A section of about 800 of these police had kept the
president captive for 14 hours at the Police Hospital in Quito before military
units brought him back to the presidential palace....

The plight of the Cuban Five is never far from the minds of progressive
people around the world. This Sept. 12, exactly 12 years since their arrest in
the United States for defending Cuba from terrorist attacks, organizations and
individuals intensified demands for their release through petitions,
demonstrations and ad campaigns....

The U.S. corporate press was silent when thousands of Hondurans poured into
the streets of Tegucigalpa on Sept. 7 to join the 12-hour national strike
called by the National Front of Popular Resistance (FNRP). It affected all 18
provinces and paralyzed the streets of 11 Honduran cities. Traffic was stopped
on roads and bridges. ...

Hundreds of thousands of Haitians have been living in misery for more than
seven months — without houses, jobs, sanitation, potable water or
electricity. The lucky ones have tents for shelter, others only tarps or
sheets....

August was a month of fierce struggle in Honduras. The National Popular
Resistance Front (FNRP) has engaged in strikes, marches and sit-ins, while the
government of Honduras has responded with ruthless repression. Speaking Sept. 6
on the resistance station Radio Globo, Juan Barahona, assistant coordinator of
FNRP and president of the United Workers Federation, said he had never seen
such brutality by the military and police in Honduras, not even in the
1980s....

The International Action Center has announced the formation of the Latin America-Caribbean Solidarity Committee. The committee has already begun planning a number of events in solidarity with the National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP) of Honduras....

Tens of thousands of teachers in Puerto Rico held a one-day work stoppage Aug. 26 to protest the neoliberal Gov. Luis Fortuño’s offensive, which has left the island’s education system in shambles. This historic stoppage shut 90 percent of the island’s schools. Teachers showed great resistance, as the recent successful student strike of the University of Puerto Rico also did....